


Brunch at the Citadel

by bethagain



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Gen Work, my kinks do not extend to slash fic with a chicken
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-13
Updated: 2015-06-19
Packaged: 2018-04-04 05:11:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 4,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4126554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bethagain/pseuds/bethagain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Apparently I am spending way too much time on the Mad Max kinkmeme.  </p>
<p>Anon requested, "Someone thinks they saw a chicken. Insanity ensues."</p>
<p>(Another one that started out as crack... and turned into a story. Oops.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by entrecomillas, who is awesome.

Furiosa is out beyond the gates of the Citadel. The sun is hot on her cropped hair and dust is already grinding between her teeth. She knows this isn’t smart. But if she saw what she thought she saw…

She keeps low as she studies the ground. She’s squinting against the sun, wishes she’d grabbed her goggles but there hadn’t been time. Tracks, shouldn’t there be tracks? It went this way, she’s sure of it. Crouching down, gaze inches above the ground, she stops and listens.

What comes out of the silence is the whine of an engine. Engines. Shit. She reaches for the gun at her hip and discovers she left that behind, too. A bullet bounces off the packed dirt near her left knee.

Furiosa drops. Nowhere to run out here on the flatland. She hits the ground and curls into a ball to protect her face and the soft parts. Grunts but doesn’t move when another bullet strikes close enough to graze her hip. Hopes to hell they’re just playing, maybe boys from the Bullet Farm out for a joyride. Because this would be a mortifying way to die.

The next impact is louder, probably a grenade because her ears are buzzing and dirt is raining down around her. Through the buzzing comes the sound of another engine and another round of gunshots, muzzle fire much closer this time. Shit, shit, shit, she’s really going to die here. Max is never going to let her hear the end of it.

But then there’s his familiar voice, between the deep blasts from what she recognizes now as his favorite Winchester rifle. “Go on, get! You know better! Move!” 

Furiosa waits until the growl of engines recedes. When she hears the sudden drop in sound that tells her they’re back on the other side of the dune, she lifts her head. Dirt crumbles down over her face. She can feel grit settling in her ears. Through the dust on her lashes she sees Max, still astride an ancient BMW cycle. He doesn’t offer her a hand.

“Must have been important,” he says.

She climbs back to her feet, muscles aching from the tension of being fired on. She takes the time to inspect her left knee—unscathed—and her right hip, which is bloody and stings. She brushes dust and sand off her shirt and trousers, scrubs at the bristle of her hair. “It was,” she says, mustering her dignity, “a chicken.”

Max busts out laughing while Furiosa glares.


	2. Chapter 2

He’s almost his taciturn self by the time they get up the lift at the Citadel. Almost, but not quite. Every few minutes a chuckle bubbles back up. It’s annoying. Furiosa contemplates hitting him with her metal hand—it’ll hurt more—but then she thinks back to the last time she saw him laugh and realizes: she never has. 

The cool of the Vault is empty, for which Furiosa is grateful. It’s still the Wives’ place, but they’ve cleaned out any sign of Immortan Joe and painted bright colors on the walls. It’s safe and mostly private. A much better spot to fix up her wound than the skin shop. The cots there are full of War Boys with nothing to do but gossip while they wait for bones to knit or the holes from excised tumors to heal.

Max pours them cups of water, and she accepts hers as the medicine it’s meant to be. Then she carefully peels her trousers away from her hip. There’s a jagged line of torn skin, dirt already crusting in the oozing blood. She knows what’s next: a big scab and a bruise. It’s going to hurt to walk and sit for the next few days. 

Max offers her a cloth soaked with clean water and she sets about cleaning her wound, trousers shoved down by her metal hand while she uses the flesh one to scrub out the dirt. Which is how Capable and Cheedo find her when they come through the Vault door: Furiosa standing there half-exposed and Max gazing at her from a day-bed. 

Cheedo’s face turns as red as Capable’s hair, but the older girl just grins. She grabs Cheedo’s hand, drags her to sit on the day-bed next to Max, and joins in watching Furiosa.

“What’d she do?” Capable asks him. Ever since he came back with a sled full of saplings for the Citadel gardens, she’s decided that Max is a member of the family. Even if half the time he doesn’t answer her.

He doesn’t answer this time either. The three of them sit there together on the day-bed, two ethereally beautiful young women and a well-worn road warrior. Furiosa ignores them while she rinses her wound. She’s just fixing a bandage with electrical tape when that laugh starts again. It makes Cheedo jump, but Capable looks delighted.

“You were,” Max says. “Chasing. A chicken.”

Furiosa looks like she’s about to snap at him, but then—unbelievably—her face turns as red as Cheedo’s. “All right,” she says. “I know. Stupid.”

“No,” says Max, but he’s laughing again.

“No chickens anymore,” Furiosa says. “Maybe an albino crow or something. A dust devil.” She shrugs, turning away, hitching up her trousers and tugging her shirt back down. 

And then suddenly, back still turned, she’s laughing with him, and he’s doubled over, and she’s reaching for a chair to sit so she doesn’t fall, and the two of them look like they’re going to pass out from giggling while Cheedo and Capable gape at them.

“They’re doing it again,” comes The Dag’s voice from the Vault’s round doorway. She walks in with a baby on her hip, surveying the scene as if she’d walked in on a crime.

“I’ve never seen them do this before,” says Capable, while Furiosa and Max catch their breath, look at each other, and both nearly fall over laughing again.

“You have,” says The Dag, in that way she has of making everything sound like a pronouncement. “Not exactly this, mind you, but indeed we all have. He hands her a gun and she knows where to point it. She gives him the wheel and he knows which way to turn. It should come as no surprise that they have their own language, too.”

Furiosa’s giggles have died down by the time this speech is finished, and her breathing is slowing to normal. The Wives can _see_ her returning to her usual coiled stillness. She nods hello to The Dag and tells her, “We were only speaking English.”

“Were you?” says The Dag. “What’s a chicken?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be crack! How is my cracky story about a post-apocalyptic chicken developing all these... feels?! Bear with me though. There’s still chicken-chasing on the way!

The Wives are all at breakfast the next morning when Furiosa comes striding up to their table in the commissary, plunks down her bowl of split peas and peppers, and yanks out a chair next to Toast the Knowing. She sits with her usual brisk efficiency and then bites her lower lip so as not to yelp—forgot about the gunshot wound. She can see the flicker of concern on Capable’s face across the table, but they both pretend it didn’t happen. 

“It was a chicken,” Furiosa says. It’s her command voice, the tone that’s usually reserved for scouting parties and battles out in the Wasteland. “I am sure I saw a chicken. There is a chicken out there and we are going to catch it.”

“All right,” says Toast, sitting calmly next to her, hands wrapped round a glass of steaming water with a few precious tea leaves afloat. “We are going to catch a chicken.” She nods crisply as if she’s already in on the plan. “What’s a chicken? What’s it for?”

Furiosa starts to answer but Cheedo beats her to it, all enthusiasm. “It’s for breakfast!” 

“A new plant, then?” asks Toast. “Are you going on a raid? Because we have seven four-wheelers in the shop, which means only five are running. The bikes aren’t much for bringing something like that home.”

“Not a plant,” says Furiosa. “We won’t need the four-wheelers. I saw it right outside the barricade. It can’t have gone far.” She reaches down to a pocket and produces a worn, rolled up sheaf of papers. Shoves her breakfast aside and flattens the papers on the table facing Toast, metal hand anchoring one side while she taps at the top page with a finger. Cheedo, Capable, and The Dag all saw this last night but they lean in for another look, dark, bright red and white-blonde heads angling together.

It’s a book, dirty and dog-eared. A funny-looking bird struts across the cover. The title is _Why the Chicken Crossed the Road._

“That,” says Furiosa. “Is a chicken.” 

“They lay eggs,” Cheedo explains. Furiosa’s amused: Cheedo’s already so enthusiastic. Twenty-four hours ago she had no idea what a chicken was, either. But then Furiosa had explained about eggs—big, generous chicken eggs, nothing like the little crow’s eggs they sometimes found in the Citadel’s rocky crags. One egg, enough protein for a whole meal. Chicken soup, boiled down from the carcass when a bird had lived out its life. Substantial, salty, flavored with carrots and herbs. Her mother and grandmother had made it, in the Green Place. 

And then Max had joined in, eyes far away but words going on for whole sentences, his voice lighter than she’d ever heard it. He told about something called pancakes, rich with wheat and sugar and held together by an egg or two. Something called waffles, crispy and hot. Omelets, frittata, poached eggs on toast. It was like listening to one of the old legends, the way he talked. When he finally fell silent again they all sat there imagining tastes they’d never tasted and Cheedo had breathed out, “That’s the high life.”

Toast is confused. “Eggs? The crows lay eggs. I remember we ate them in the lean times, back when…” She trails off. Toast doesn’t talk about home. “Dag has done such a good job on the gardens, we have plenty of food. Why spend the energy on eggs?”

Once upon a time, Imperator Furiosa would have shot that question down. Subordinates don’t ask questions. But this is a new world, and while she’s still Imperator down in the workshop and out on the road, over breakfast Toast is her friend. So she tries to explain. Cheedo and Capable try to help, tumbling over each other about scrambled eggs and coddled eggs and curried egg salad.

Toast listens to them but she clearly isn’t getting it. Finally they wind down and she says, in her usual practical tone, “You’re all mental. What time are we meeting up to catch this chicken?”


	4. Chapter 4

When Furiosa decides something needs to happen, it happens. Their days are busy, but a wandering chicken isn’t going to last long in the desert. It might find water and food near the Citadel, but there are many things out there that would love to eat it. This isn’t just catching a chicken, it’s a damn chicken rescue mission.

She meets up with Toast in the shop, and the two of them retire to a corner and put their heads together while metal clanks and welding torches sing in the background. Soon Toast is making a sketch on the last page of the chicken book as Furiosa stalks through the shop, picking up washers, tools, a can of fuel. The men working on the four-wheelers notice, of course they do, but Furiosa doesn’t even need to stare them down. Her crew, her shop, her rules. 

On their way out the door, one of her mechanics asks what to work on while Furiosa’s gone. “Really?” she says. “Figure it out. I’m not staying here to babysit you.” The boys stand up a little straighter. “Make me proud,” she adds over her shoulder, and she can hear them jumping back to work behind her.

 

Two hours later Furiosa and the wives gather at the base of the Citadel’s center tower. There isn’t much that’s extra at the Citadel but they’ve rounded up scraps, tools, nothing that couldn’t be spared for a day or two. The Dag has a stack of gutters from the gardens, made to feed the next section of hydroponics when this season’s seeds are ready. Capable’s sweet-talked her way to multiple rolls of twine from the War Boy stationed in the supply room, with a promise to wind it back up and return it later. The other Wives tease her about what else she might have promised. Cheedo brings a couple of balls from the children’s room and a handful of corn kernels snuck from the kitchen stores.

Furiosa makes each of them show her that they’ve brought a weapon and that it works. Then they pile onto bikes brought down from the garage, balancing tools and supplies in baskets, over fenders, on handlebars. With Imperator Furiosa as escort, they ride out past the astonished guards like they do this every day. 

 

Cheedo sidles up to Capable as she sinks a shovel into the sand. 

“Capable?” she says. “Do you…” She pauses. “Do you think there’s really a chicken?”

Capable wipes her forehead and raises her goggles so she can see more clearly before she answers. “Furiosa says there’s a chicken.”

“But… I mean…” Cheedo gestures at the empty wasteland before them, a small, uncertain wave. 

“Furiosa says there’s a chicken,” Capable repeats. “We love Furiosa. Therefore, there’s a chicken.” She lowers her goggles and digs the shovel into the ground again.

Cheedo digs in too, but after a few shovelfuls she stops. “Does Max think there’s a chicken?”

“I don’t know.”

“But Max lo—“

“Shh!” Capable looks around. Furiosa is yards away, rifle on her shoulder as she stands guard over Toast, who is welding two pieces of metal together in a spray of sparks. “We don’t talk about that, remember? It makes them mad.”

“Well, he doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. They’re going to have to talk about it someday,” Cheedo says.

“No,” comes Furiosa’s voice, carrying plenty loud across the open land. “We’re not.”

Capable and Cheedo roll their eyes at each other and go back to digging.


	5. Chapter 5

By the time they’re done they’re covered in sweat and dirt. Capable’s long locks have escaped the band she’s wearing and one fiery tendril is sticking to her cheek. Cheedo’s arms are muddy to the elbows. The Dag’s blonde hair is so dusty it looks brown. They’re used to seeing Toast covered in dirt and engine grease, so actually she looks about the same. 

They meet Max on his way back from test-driving a freshly repaired four-wheeler. He doesn’t say anything. He just sits there in the driver’s seat and looks at their handiwork. It starts at the base of one of the Citadel’s towers and stretches out to the wall, under the wall, and beyond, yards and yards of trenches, string, a bucket, wire, little metal towers all in a row. 

He looks over at Furiosa, his face blank except for one eyebrow just the tiniest bit raised. She stares back at him in full Imperator mode, face still but eyes flashing: this is how it’s going to be.

He nods: all right, have it your way. But as he steps on the accelerator he gives the Wives a rare smile, and they smile back. 

 

“You going to explain it?” Max asks. They’re sitting side by side on the edge of the lift, legs dangling over empty air, the workshop nighttime silent behind them. 

The night is clear, little wind, no dust. Out on the flatland beyond the gates, moonlight shines off the long row of gutters, the pail of water, bits of chrome amid the sand. Furiosa still has a knife in her boot but she’s left her metal arm back in the shop. The muscles in her shoulder feel good without the weight.

“Can’t just trap the chicken,” she says. “There’s no one we can spare to watch the trap.”

Max nods. “Trapped chicken can’t run. Dead chickens don’t lay eggs.”

“So we built a machine. It was Toast’s idea.” Furiosa nods toward their creation, all those pieces sitting quiet in the desert. “You’ll see.”

“Suppose I will,” says Max.

Furiosa leans back on her elbows, looks at the stars. The perfume of plants and good dirt drifts down from the gardens. Beside her, Max rolls out a cloth and the smell of gun oil mixes in as he starts disassembling a .40 caliber pistol.

It’s been a good day.

 

High above them, the Wives are lounging on a rock ledge, watching the moonrise together after having washed off the day’s work. A tiny, precious oil lamp adds just enough light to read. Cheedo the Fragile is flipping through the chicken book again, studying the pictures and speaking the rhymes out loud to The Dag’s little girl, who is cuddled in her lap. 

Toast has questions. “This thing about the eggs,” she says. “Eggs make baby chickens. Don’t you need a male chicken for that? That book has a picture. A rooster?” 

Cheedo looks up from the book, suddenly troubled. “Are we going to have to catch a boy chicken, too? What if the chicken doesn’t want the boy chicken?”

“It’s all right, sweet one,” Capable explains gently. “Furiosa told me. You only need a boy chicken if you want the eggs to turn into baby chickens. Ours will lay eggs just fine all on her own.”

“That’s good,” nods Cheedo. She plants a kiss on the toddler’s head and whispers into her hair. “Just you wait. We’re going to be having omelets for breakfast.”


	6. Chapter 6

The desert is silent in the early morning. A few grains of sand swirl around the base of the Citadel gates. 

A white chicken walks across the flatland. It stops near a basket woven from strips of old tires, propped up on a bent antenna.

The chicken bobs its head, clucks a question. 

The basket casts shade over a few corn kernels and a bowl of water. 

The chicken steps closer. Nothing else moves. It lowers its head, pecks at the corn, and knocks over the antenna. 

The basket falls, weighted by heavy iron washers, and the chicken is trapped. A ball that had been carefully balanced atop the basket drops down into a gutter and rolls. 

It bounces over the welds Toast made, picks up speed as it angles down into the trench that Capable and Cheedo dug, and tips over a pail of water. The water washes away the sand under a half-rusted hubcap, which shifts and dislodges a mangled steel fender, releasing a taut piece of twine that stretches up toward the sky.

High on the Citadel’s stone face, the twine winds round a circle of nails welded onto an old gear wheel, as a bashed-in tire rim on the other end drops. The few remaining gear teeth click against a piece of broken hacksaw blade. The vibration sets another ball rolling down an exhaust pipe to knock a tire iron off a windowsill. 

The tire iron lands on a hammered sheet of metal, made from a door that didn’t have a car attached anymore. The sheet of metal rings like a gong.

Toast, Capable, Cheedo, and The Dag all sit up in their beds, hair wild, eyes shining. Five minutes later they’re up and dressed, and Toast is running to get Furiosa.


	7. Chapter 7

It’s a march of triumph back to the tower. Furiosa holds the basket with the chicken. The Wives pull the ropes to raise the smallest lift and then they surround her as they walk, vying for the chance to peer in at the funny little bird. They’re on their way up to the gardens, where they can keep the chicken in one of the vegetable crates until there’s time to build it a pen of its own. 

And then two War Boys come tearing around a corner, the one behind hollering, “I’m driving!” and the one in front yelling, “Not if I get there first!” They careen into Furiosa, one after the other, and the basket goes flying.

The chicken scrambles out of the basket and _runs._

Furiosa scrambles to her feet and runs after it, leaving the War Boys in a heap on the corridor floor. She tries a flying tackle, hits the ground hard, nothing to show for it but a few feathers in her hand. The chicken dodges and dashes through an open door. Cheedo and Capable take off after it while Toast grabs the basket and runs to block the doorway. 

They’re in the garage workshop. Six four-wheelers are arranged in various states of repair, some nearly ready, some in pieces. Tools and car parts cover the floor. There are a lot of places for a chicken to hide.

Capable’s on her knees, peering between wheels and under car chassis. Cheedo’s stalking through the room, ready to pounce. The Dag stands by the doorway, tall and solemn, and says, “Here, chickie chickie.”

There’s a tiny scuffling noise from beneath a Chevy, and Capable drops flat to look. “Here!” she hisses, stretching an arm beneath the frame as far as she can reach.

The chicken dashes out the other side, between Cheedo’s legs, and heads for a corner where it stops and makes a stand, clucking and waving its wings. Toast, still clutching the basket, moves toward it, taking slow, deliberate steps. She’s almost there—six feet, three feet—when the chicken gives another “squawk!,” dodges around her, and— “It’s headed for the lift!” Capable yells. They all freeze for a moment as their precious, funny bird makes its run for freedom toward the open bay doors. “It’s going to fly away,” Cheedo says sadly, and Capable says, “Don’t worry, we can catch it again.”

At which point Furiosa comes tumbling through the door, wide-eyed, blood already dripping onto her shirt from the lip she’d split when she hit the floor. “It’s a chicken!” she’s yelling, and they all just stare at her until she finishes the thought: “Chickens don’t fly!”

There’s a moment of panic but Imperator Furiosa’s not going to go without her damn eggs. “Toast! Left side of the lift. Now. Bring the basket!” Toast runs.

“Cheedo! Right side. Go!” Cheedo’s already moving. “Dag, Capable—you’re the middle. Now get down! All of you. Now.” The Wives catch on fast, they always did. They’re all crouched down, lined up as a human barricade along the edge of the lift, no way a chicken’s getting through. 

The chicken stops short, clucking at them, not sure where to go from here. It flaps its wings but only manages to rise a foot or two off the ground before dropping down again, all clucks and ruffled feathers. Furiosa stalks it from a crouch, down on its level… slowly, slowly… she reaches out… and with a sudden leap she’s cradling the chicken to her chest.

The Wives are all beaming and laughing, brushing each other off and exchanging triumphant hugs. Furiosa sets the chicken gently back in the basket and latches the lid. The wound on her hip throbs from her fall. She wipes the back of her hand across her mouth and it comes away bloody, but that’s all right. Wounds heal. 

She’s just getting back to her feet when she notices Max standing in the doorway, looking bewildered as he surveys the scene. She can feel fresh blood welling up from her lower lip as she smiles at him, holding the basket so he can see. 

“Told you,” she says.

He nods as if it’s not completely astonishing to see a chicken for the first time in… how many years? “Didn’t doubt you,” he says.


	8. Chapter 8

The Dag names her Freyja. Toast builds her a little house with a yard, all enclosed, where she can scratch for bugs. They spend weeks feeding her up and letting her get used to her new home. Capable comes up and sings to her sometimes. Cheedo reads her the chicken book. Max sneaks her table scraps and seems to think nobody notices. The Dag lets him, because Furiosa says that’s actually just fine for chickens.

Furiosa adds a daily chicken inspection to her already busy schedule.

And finally, one day, there’s an egg. A few days later, another one. And then another the next day, and another after that. 

 

There are never enough eggs to go around, of course. They cook their first omelet on a little portable burner in the Vault and share it, one bite for each. There’s not enough wheat for bread yet, but on another day Max makes exactly six tiny pancakes, handing them out in silence, and they’re just as wonderful as he’d said. When they’ve all had a taste Capable catches Furiosa staring at Max like he’s the best thing since diesel engines. And later, when it’s time to get back to work, she catches Max staring at Furiosa as she talks strategy with Toast, planning out the new arsenal for the four-wheel fleet. Capable nudges Cheedo, but they don’t say a word.

For one whole month they save the eggs every day, storing them in a cool cave dug out of the rock below the center tower, and then serve everyone in the Citadel scrambled eggs for breakfast, generously salted and rich with goat’s milk butter.

And then one day, when it’s started to seem normal to have a chicken up there in the gardens and that small, treasured supply of eggs, a wanderer appears with a rooster.

He doesn’t know what it is. He stole it from a settlement, out there somewhere, because they seemed to treat it valuable. Fed it on bugs and whatever other food he could spare. He’s been traveling without a compass, couldn’t tell where the settlement was. Back there somewhere, or maybe—he points in another direction, 90 degrees off—maybe over there. Furiosa doesn’t even haggle. She gives him water, guzzoline, sends him on his way with a big basket of peas and potatoes. 

She doesn’t tell the Wives, doesn’t tell Max, just carries the rooster on up to the gardens. Pops him in a vegetable crate like they did with Freyja, back when they first brought her up here, and sets him down outside her little fence. Gives him some food and water, for now. Toast can build him his own chicken house later, with a door that adjoins Freyja’s, and they’ll either get along or they won’t.

Because that’s the way of things, she thinks, as she makes her way back down the steep stone stairs. People walk into your life and they’re either meant for you or they’re not. She’s glad for the Wives. It’s a strange thing to have friends, but it’s good. She’s glad Freyja’s not going to be the only chicken in the world anymore. 

And she still doesn’t know what the hell to do about Max, even after all this time. She finds him in the workshop, head under the hood of a bashed-up Ford, and doesn’t even bother to say hello. She just picks up a wrench and joins him.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] Brunch at the Citadel](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13120779) by [exmanhater](https://archiveofourown.org/users/exmanhater/pseuds/exmanhater)




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